TOMMY WRIGHT believes that St Johnstone deserved a replay at least after running Celtic close in their Scottish Cup quarter-final tie at McDiarmid Park.
A single goal from Ryan Christie saw the dogged Saints exit the tournament, but Wright felt the result was rough on his players given what they contributed to a hard-fought encounter.
"I think the performance merited [a replay]," Wright said.
"Alright, Celtic had more chances. But we have worked their goalkeeper a lot and had numerous corners. We must have been doing something right in terms of getting forward.
"There were a lot of good performances and that’s continuing now on a consistent level. This isn’t the result we wanted but I can’t have any complaints about the performance.
"I thought the performance was better than good. We pushed Celtic all the way and we should have done enough to get a draw. But we haven’t defended a set play and that’s cost us in the end.
"I’m extremely proud of their performance but ultimately we are out of the cup because we didn’t defend a set play.
"We thought we had weathered the storm in the second half when Celtic started it better than us. But we had chances of our own, good opportunities, and were a real attacking threat throughout the game.
"We knew we would have to work hard, but we have gone toe-to-toe with the best team in the country for a long time and just fallen short."
Meanwhile, Saints midfielder Matt Butcher praised teammate Ali McCann after the game, saying he is on a level with any of the youngsters he has encountered while playing for parent club Bournemouth.
“Ali stood up to the battle well against some top players," Butcher said.
“He has been exceptional all season, he’s transformed his game to be able to play men’s football really quickly.
“That has been the impressive thing and he’s added goals to his game as well.
“That is the hardest thing to do and he’s managed that.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel